A MEETING OF RIVALS 217 



at a salary of $900 a year. Samuel F. Bradford, the 

 publisher of this work, soon became interested in Wil- 

 son's projected American Ornithology and agreed to 

 publish it. It became the ambition of both author and 

 publisher to produce the work in a superior style, and 

 to make it as perfect and complete an American prod- 

 uct as possible. Only the pigments used in coloring 

 some of the plates were imported from Europe. 9 



Wilson issued in April, 1807, an elaborate prospectus 

 of his proposed Ornithology, in which he stated that the 

 completed work would comprise ten volumes, to cost 

 $120, and that it would be illustrated by plates, engraved 

 and colored by hand, after the manner of a carefully 

 prepared sample which was issued with the printed an- 

 nouncement. In September, 1808, as already intimated, 

 the first volume of the American Ornithology 10 appeared 



lished at Philadelphia, in forty-one quarto volumes of text and six volumes 

 of plates, by Samuel F. Bradford and the Messrs. Murray, Fairman & 

 Company, 1810-1824. 



9 "The types," said Charles Robert Leslie, "which were very beautiful, 

 were cast in America, and though at that time paper was largely imported, 

 he [Mr. Bradford] determined that the paper should be of American 

 manufacture; and I remember that Ames, the paper maker, carried his 

 patriotism so far that he declared that he would use only American rags 

 in making it." (Autobiographical Recollections, Boston, 1860.) 



10 The American Ornithology: or, the Natural History of the Birds 

 of the United States: Illustrated with Plates Engraved and Colored from 

 Original Drawings taken from Nature, by Alexander Wilson, was published 

 in nine imperial quarto volumes by Messrs. Bradford and Inskeep, at 

 Philadelphia, 1808-1814. Each volume contained nine plates and from 

 100 to 167 pages of text, exclusive of prefatory and other matter. The 

 eighth volume, which was nearly ready for press at the time of the 

 author's death, was edited by George Ord, Wilson's friend and executor; 

 the final volume, which was wholly by Ord, and which was issued in 

 the same year, contained a life of Wilson. After the appearance of the 

 initial volume, the edition was extended to 500 copies and the first volume 

 was entirely reset. Ord's life of Wilson was expanded for a three-volume 

 edition of the Ornithology, and from oversheets of this work was pro- 

 duced as a separate volume in 1828 (see Note, Vol. I, p. 223). 



Wilson's published lists of subscribers show 449 names, calling for 458 

 copies, more than half of which were taken by residents of Pennsylvania, 

 New York and Louisiana; 70 were subscribed for in Philadelphia, chiefly 

 by business men, artists, and "those in the middle class of society;" New 



